Rob joins jo(e) and friends (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and no doubt many that I missed) in a new¹ meme-y thing, Friday Poetry Blogging, that I like the look of.

Since his Collected is sitting on the desk in front of me, here's Sir John:

The Cottage Hospital

At the end of a long-walled garden
   in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry—
   scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches
   where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes
   from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers
   basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects,
   and children played in the street.

Out of this bright intentness
   into the mulberry shade
Musca domestica (housefly)
   swung from the August light
Slap into slithery rigging
   by the waiting spider made
Which spun the lithe elastic
   till the fly was shrouded tight.
Down came the hairy talons
   and horrible poison blade
And none of the garden noticed
   that fizzing, hopeless fight.

Say in what Cottage Hospital
   whose pale green walls resound
With the tap upon polished parquet
   of inflexible nurses' feet
Shall I myself be lying
   when they range the screens around?
And say shall I groan in dying,
   as I twist the sweaty sheet?
Or gasp for breath uncrying,
   as I feel my senses drown'd
While the air is swimming with insects
   and children play in the street?

In a Bath Teashop

“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
      Let us hold hands and look.”
She, such a very ordinary little woman;
      He, such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
      In the teashop’s ingle-nook.

Mortality

The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
   Shiver and shatter and fall
As the steering column of his comfortable Humber
   Batters in the bony wall.
All those delicate re-adjustments
   "On the one hand, if we proceed
With the ad hoc policy hitherto adapted
   To individual need...
On the other hand, too rigid an arrangement
   Might, of itself, perforce...
I would like to submit for the Minister's concurrence
   The following alternative course,
Subject to revision and reconsideration
   In the light of our experience gains..."
And this had to happen at the corner where the by-pass
   Comes into Egham out of Staines.
That very near miss for an All Souls' Fellowship
   The recent compensation of a 'K'—
The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
   Are sweetbread on the road today.

Slough

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
     Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
     Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town—
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week for half-a-crown
     For twenty years,

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
     In women's tears,

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
     And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
     They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
     To Maidenhead

And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
     But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
     And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
     The earth exhales.

Death in Leamington

She died in the upstairs bedroom
   By the light of the ev'ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
   From over Leamington Spa.

Beside her the lonely crochet
   Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work'd it
   Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
   Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs—
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
   And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
   She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
   She covered the fire with coal.

And "Tea!" she said in a tiny voice
   "Wake up! It's nearly five."
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
   Half dead and half alive!

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
   Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
   Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
   At the gray, decaying face
As the calm of a Leamington ev'ning
   Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
   Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
   Turned down the gas in the hall.